


Representation

by rulanarinrush



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Gen, Guilt, Hallucinations, Leonie and Lorenz show up for half a second, post-war AU, pre-release
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rulanarinrush/pseuds/rulanarinrush
Summary: He is always there to serve as a reminder. Always.





	Representation

**Author's Note:**

> Post War AU. Fic is open to interpretation.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

When the war ends, Ingrid is left with nothing but her worn lance and the clothing on her back. Her life as a soldier is over. A lance feels too heavy in her hands, and the lonely sky no longer brings the comfort it once brought her.

The first time she sees Sylvain, it’s when she’s tending to the Goneril family gardens. After the war, she had nowhere to go, and Lady Hilda offered her a place to stay and work as a servant. She would be a fool to refuse. (Her home is just a distant memory, after all.)

 _“A rose to complement your beauty,” he would tease. “I do it much better than Lorenz, don’t I?”_

_She would scoff at him, and he would laugh._

When she sees him, she makes a noise that sounds pitiful to her own ears. He is staring at her, behind a rose hedge. He is her fire. He is red, like the roses, like love. He is as devilishly handsome as when she last saw him.

He burned her.

She is in such shock that her leg catches the watering pot next to her, causing a loud clanging sound. 

The noise alerts a fellow servant in the garden. “Miss Galatea?” she questions. “Is everything alright?”

“You don’t see him?” Ingrid asks. When she turns to where he was, he is gone, the way a Faerghus storm would sweep through and tear away everything in its path, leaving no trace that anything had ever existed there at all.

* * *

_An arrow pierces her pegasus’ hide. She barely has time to react before another flies into the air, finding its mark in her abdomen. Both her and the pegasus screech in agony, and fall like fallen angels._

_When she rouses again, she finds herself on the ground, broken, but alive. Her battalion is not._

_“Wow,” she hears someone say. She shivers. She knows that voice. “It takes more than that to kill you, doesn’t it?”_

_Claude is towering over her. She must look pathetic, bleeding out on the ground before her enemy._

_She closes her eyes. She expects a simple death, the death of a knight._

_“I was right. You would make a good ally.”_

* * *

The next time she sees Sylvain, it’s in the gardens, again. But this time, he breaks his silence.

“Hello, Ingrid,” she stops everything she is doing and stares at him. “How fitting that you would tend to flowers, after the fighting is over.”

She does not say anything in response. There is nothing to say.

“They always suited you. You were always as beautiful as a flower. But every rose has its thorns, huh?”

The remark gets wordless surprise out of her. She doesn’t say anything, so he must take notice or not care, because he continues.

“How did it feel? To betray Faerghus, to leave it behind for a life of dishonor?”

It sounds like him, but it is not him. It is merely an illusion of him, from where she does not know.

He doesn’t get a response out of her again.

* * *

_“Never,” she spits out. “I would never betray my country, my lord Dimitri, to save my own skin.”_

_“Well,” Claude remarks, with his arrow aimed at her, “You can choose our side or die. Either way, the result doesn’t matter to me.”_

_But the result does matter, to her. A part of her screams to face her execution, to fulfill her vows as a knight. The other side of her is louder. The other side of her screams that this is her chance, this is her chance to escape, to rejoin her true army when the chance is right. Claude must be a fool, to trust her._

_In the end, Claude is not a fool. She never does find that chance._

* * *

She sees him again in a meeting with Claude about what to do with the Faerghus territory that the Leicester Alliance gained from the war. The Alliance did not win the war, but it did not lose it either(certainly not as much as the Holy Kingdom did). The Holy Kingdom is to be split between the Empire and the Alliance, the way one would slice a cake, a ruined, mangled cake.

Sylvain is silent, slouching on a column and eyeing her. No one takes notice of him.

Inevitably, the Galatea territory comes up. She stiffens at the name.

“Oh, that’s right.” Hilda comments. She turns to Ingrid. “That was your home, wasn’t it? Do you want it back?”

Ingrid makes a noise of surprise. “I can have it back?”

“Well,” Hilda looks away sheepishly. “Yes and no. Someone from the Alliance would rule over the land, technically. But you would still live on it, and hold a high position of power.”

_Do you want to go home?_

The weight of Sylvain’s stare is heavier than ever.

“No.” she says, her heart heavy. “It’s not mine anymore.”

There’s no one waiting for her there anymore.

Hilda gives her a small smile. She was always good at getting what she wanted, wasn’t she?

When she leaves the room, he is still in the same spot, he is still staring at her. She can’t tell what the look on his face means.

* * *

That night, she sees him outside her window. He doesn’t say anything to her, he simply stares at her. His figure is illuminated by the light of the moon, and his eyes are bright and shining, gazing at her.

The image of his eyes linger in her mind. His eyes were always one of the most striking things about him.

* * *

_“Ingrid!” He calls. It’s his voice. The voice she had hoped she would never hear again._

_The moment she hears him, a pitiful part of her bubbles to the surface. She knows that she must be shaking._

_“It’s going to be alright,” he calls. "It’s alright. Dimitri will understand. I’m going to save you!”_

_But that’s the problem, he can’t. Not with Claude circling overhead, not with the entirety of the Alliance behind her._

_No, she’s wrong. There is a way to escape._

_It would be so easy to end this. There is a lance, right there in her hand. She could easily point it at herself and end this._

_She sees her way out. But she is a coward._

_...In the end, she was never a knight to begin with._

_“I’m sorry,” She quivers. Her body is shaking like a leaf in a storm. Claude’s eyes are boring into her. She has made a fatal mistake._

_“I-I can never go back!”_

* * *

She sees him again in the library as she’s searching for a book.

“You’re not going to ask me where the rest of them are?” he asks, in the most plaintive tone she’s ever heard.

“No,” she bites out. She’s more focused on finding the book that Hilda had wanted. “Just go away.”

He gives her puppy eyes. They just seem stiff and dead to her. 

“Awww,” he drawls. “I was hoping you would ask.”

“Why would I?” Ingrid snaps back. “I already know where they are.” 

“Do you?” Sylvain retorts, sounding awfully pleased. 

“Do you want to know what Felix would say to you?” This catches her attention.

“Nothing!” he answers. “But Lysithea made quick work of him, didn’t she?”

Ingrid slams the door on her way out.

* * *

_She fights halfheartedly. All her training as a knight is lost before her enemy. And his swings are just as halfhearted._

_“Ingrid,” he says. He sounds so miserable. Her chest is being crushed under the weight of a thousand swords. “Stop this. Come back.”_

_She could never be trusted with a mount again, and she knows why. It would be too easy to escape in the thick of battle. She charges at the cavalier before her, and his lance meets hers._

_After a few charges, it becomes clear why Claude had directed her to this side of the battlefield. Lorenz has been slowly inching towards her on one side, and Leonie has been on her other._

_Seiros. Claude wants to take him too._

_The worst part of this is that she can understand Claude’s reasoning. Take away Dimitri’s closest companions and best fighters, and the prince has nothing but his declining mental health and a ruined army._

_And, no matter how much Claude has changed, he would never want to kill one of his former classmates. That small, faintly beating idealism is still a part of him too._

_She can’t let that happen to either of him or her liege._

_“Hurry up,” Ingrid pants. “They’re going to capture you, too. Kill me!”_

_A look of raw pain flashes on him. She knows that she had just asked for the impossible from him. But his eyes say that he knows what must be done. If nothing else, he is capable and loyal._

_He takes one look at Leonie, to her right, one look at Lorenz to her left, and one look at Claude, above her. He takes a deep breath, raises his lance, and charges one last time._

_She sees her life flash before her. Her courage collapses, the pillar of strength crumbles._

_She raises her lance at the last second, the awful sound of a lance piercing flesh erupts in her ears._

_In the end, she was just a coward. She couldn’t even die properly._

* * *

That night, he’s waiting for her on her bed. 

“Hello, princess,” he slurs, smiling. There’s a splash of blood trickling down his lips. “You’re not going to scold me? For entering a lady’s room like this?”

 _Ignore him,_ she thinks. She moves from her door to her desk. _He’s not real, he’s not real—_

“Now that’s cold, milady,” he cries, clutching his chest dramatically. “You’re just going to ignore me? You always had something to say to me.”

She ignores him again, and repeats her mantra in her mind.

“What did I do?” he questions. “What did I do to deserve your hatred?” She is silent. “What did I—no, the Blue Lions do to deserve your hatred?”

She can’t stifle her gasp. This gets a giggle out of him.

“Oh, I got you there, didn’t I? You’re so cute,” he teases, softly, madly.

This time, he actually moves off the bed, and strolls over to her side in a jovial manner.

When she looks at him, his chest has been pierced, and blood is running down his shirt.

“Oh, Ingrid,” he says. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he chants, almost fanatically. She covers her eyes and ears, but her hands do not protect her. 

“I wonder,” he remarks. “How much those words meant to you.” His chest is bleeding profusely now.

“Ingrid,” he gasps. Red oozes out of a wound in his chest, pooling rivers of blood into her lap, onto the floor, into her mind. “Why did you kill me?”

She screams.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the 3H discord for giving me the confidence to post this! You are all amazing.


End file.
